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Home · What to cook · We made this up
From what you have

Cubed Auberggette sauté

Yes, we just made that name up 😄 There is no such dish — but with what you have, this is exactly what there will be.

This wants to be a sauté: high heat, a wide pan, and very little interference.

What are you making
Main dish Soup Salad Hot starter Cold mezze Something sweet Something with dough Börek Cake Pilaf Pasta For breakfast A drink
How to cook it
Raw Sauté Frying Oven Grill Boiling Steamed Pressure
How to cut it
Roughly chopped Cubed Sliced Whole Grated Juice only

A wide pan, a high flame and very little interference. A crowded pan does not sauté, it steams. Even cubes cook evenly. One piece twice the size of the rest is either raw or the reason the others fell apart.

What it is made of, by weight 1.2 kg

These have no measured weight, so they are not in the bar: Red pepper paste. We leave them out rather than write a plausible number.

This is weight, not nutrition. Olive oil can be a tenth of the weight and most of the calories.
You gave no amounts; these are a sensible household measure for each. Change the ratio and you change the dish.

Balance check

Try adding this

Salt, pepper, water and oil are assumed to be in every kitchen; we never count them as missing.

An empty plate
The plate is empty: no photograph of this has been made yet.

Generated once and kept against this exact combination of ingredients, cooking and cut, so everybody who picks the same things sees the same one. It is not a photograph of this dish: nobody has cooked it.

What it should look like

In a bowl, in visible pieces and lightly coloured.

Water
82% The first thing that decides the consistency.
Fat
9% Gives the shine and the coating it leaves.
Browning
32% As Maillard runs the colour moves to a warm brown.

The figures above are the engine’s reading: the colour comes from the measured colour of what went in and how far browning ran, the consistency from the water fraction, the shine from the fat. The image is generated from those same numbers.
Worked out for: Frying, 170 °C, 15 minutes.

Amounts

For 4, 1189 g in total

The amounts, the steps and the engine’s readings are blurred: making the photograph opens them.

  • 400g Beef mince (15% fat)
  • 1pcs Aubergine ≈ 250 g
  • 200g Water
  • 1pcs Tomato ≈ 120 g
  • 100g Courgette
  • 40g Sunflower oil (linoleic)
  • 1pcs Pepper ≈ 30 g
  • 30g Tomato paste
  • 2pcs Garlic ≈ 10 g
  • 6g Salt
  • 3g Chilli flakes

Added at the end: Black pepper, Olive oil. No weight is given for these: the amount is a matter of taste, and the engine’s prediction carries none for them either.

How to make it

  1. Warm the sunflower oil (linoleic) in the pan, add the garlic, tomato paste, chilli flakes and stir for a minute over a low flame. We are not after colour here, only for it to open up.

    • Sunflower oil (linoleic)
    • Garlic
    • Tomato paste
    • Chilli flakes
    Why The raw taste of tomato paste only leaves in hot fat, and that is where its colour opens. Spice aroma compounds dissolve in fat, not water.

  2. Pat the beef mince (15% fat) dry and lay it in the pan in a single layer. Leave it alone: do not turn it until the underside has taken a deep colour. If the pan is crowded, do it in two batches.

    • Beef mince (15% fat)
    Why Maillard starts above 140 °C and a wet surface never gets there: the water boiling off at 100 °C holds the surface at that temperature, and the meat steams instead of browning. Drying it and not crowding the pan are two answers to the same problem.

  3. Cut the aubergine into large pieces, add them and turn for 6–8 minutes. Do not rush; let the edges take a little colour.

    • Aubergine
    Why Root vegetables have thick cell walls and release their water late. Add them with the soft ones and one stays raw while the other falls apart.

  4. Add the courgette, pepper, tomato and turn for another 3–4 minutes. Do not crowd the pan: crowded vegetables steam instead of browning.

    • Courgette
    • Pepper
    • Tomato
    Why Vegetables are 90% water. In a crowded pan the steam cannot escape, the temperature locks at 100 °C and Maillard never begins.

  5. Add the red pepper paste last of all, and keep it away from the flame.

    • Red pepper paste
    Why The aroma compounds in acid and fresh herbs are volatile: in a boiling pot they are the first to go, leaving only sharpness. Squeeze the lemon at the table, not into the pan.

  6. Season at the end and by weight: roughly 1% of the total. If it tastes flat, try a squeeze of acid before you reach for more salt.

    • Salt
    Why The 0.8–1.5% band is where flavours sharpen and bitterness is suppressed. Above it, osmosis pulls water out, the texture tightens and the flavour closes down — with no way back.
Taste profile

What it is like

Nobody has eaten this and there is no photograph of it. All we have is the taste vectors of what went in, through the same model every written recipe uses.

  1. Sweet 21
  2. Salty 6
  3. Sour 16
  4. Bitter 12
  5. Umami 32
  6. Heat 8
  7. Richness 15
  8. Aroma 40

This profile is computed rather than measured: the role-weighted average of its ingredients’ taste vectors, shifted by what the cooking does. The thin line is the database average on that axis.

Nearly there

One or two more things and these are real dishes.

Musakka

You still need

Bulb onion

Şakşuka

You still need

Olive oil

Köpoğlu

You still need

Yoghurt